In the food business, presentation of food items is considered essential. Presentation or the visual appearance of food items often forms a customer's first impression of the food items. An attractive and appealing presentation stimulates the desire to taste the food, while an improper or unattractive display may remove or diminish the desire to taste the food.
In food businesses that dispense from food from bulk containers, such as ice cream, the presentation of the food in the bulk containers can make or break a business. For example, ice cream and other frozen food items, such as frozen yogurt, gelato, sherbet, sorbet, and the like, are often stored in large bucket or tub-like containers which are positioned in a cooler having a glass wall through which customers may observe the food item. As the ice cream or the like is removed from the containers, some residual ice cream will be left stuck to the sides of the containers. In order to improve the presentation of the containers, and to conserve product, workers will often scrape the residual food product down into contact with the remaining product in the container. Not only can this result in possible food contamination, but customers also find this scraping visually unappealing.
Therefore a need exists for novel systems and devices for containing and dispensing food items while improving the presentation of the food items. There is also a need for novel systems and devices which eliminate the need and time wasted in having to scrape or wipe down the inner sides of containers. Finally, a need exists for novel systems and devices for containing and dispensing food items which allow the food items to be continuously dispensed from a visually appealing container.